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Saturday, Calgary Flames president Ken King had talked about his team having access to the biggest water pumps in North America.
The bad news?
Unprecedented water levels in the Scotiabank Saddledome prevented their deployment.
But, by Sunday morning, those pumps were being put to use. Also, several contractors had managed to get on site, according to Flames president Ken King. By suppertime, water inside the rink was down a couple of feet.
Which is a significant development, but it is still a long way from allowing Flames officials to determine the extent of the damage.
The Flames' recovery team regroups Monday morning.
See photos of inside the Saddledome here.
Even Saturday, though, King had been optimistic.
"We're going to be ready for the opening of the season."
National Hockey League teams begin playing in three months. So, already, the Flames had been busy.
"Because of the plans that need to be put in place, and the authorizations that are necessary, we're ready to go and we're not waiting," King said at McMahon Stadium. "We're ordering everything, including hockey equipment, right now."
The Flames, of course, are not the Saddledome's lone tenants.
During the Calgary Stampede, an agricultural show is booked for the building — and, as of yet, not cancelled.
"That's a move-in that's nine days from now," King said Saturday. "That may seem ludicrously ambitious, but this is Calgary."
King added that he'd spoken to Nashville Predators general manager David Poile, whose club faced fallout from a flood during the spring of 2010.
"It was similar but not as serious situation (as the Flames'), and I asked him about their recovery plan," he said. "And he said they had to work very hard in order to get ready for the first game of their season — and their problem occurred (in) May. So Libby (Raines, vice-president of building operations) and our group and all of our contractors have a full load of work to do."
Acknowledging that he has been in touch with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, King said the topic of contingency scheduling was never discussed.
"It would be premature to deal with that now."
King had been unable to quantify the damage. No dollar figures.
"None whatsoever — I can't comprehend what it might be," he said. "I went back in (Saturday) and it's a mess. If you put (water as high as Row 8) into perspective . . . that means if you were a hockey player walking out of the tunnel out onto the ice, you would be under water yourself.
"It is a total loss on the event level. To the degree that it is greater than that, we do not know, obviously."
Event level includes the ice plant and kitchens, all of the dressing rooms and coaches' offices, not to mention the JumboTron nerve-centre, which features a couple of million dollars' worth of high-tech gear.
King added that the JumboTron itself, which reportedly had been marooned at ice level during the flood, is in fact fine.
Beyond that, though, news is mostly bad.
"It's a total loss," he said. "There was nothing saved. All the mechanical equipment — including the equipment which drives our JumboTron equipment — is, at this moment, under about 15 feet of water and not salvageable, I assume."
King had been asked if the flood damage affects — either by fast-tracking or delaying — the team's plans for a new rink.
"I don't think it affects it at all," he replied. "We need to put the building back into service. In the event that we were to begin construction on a new building today, that's probably a two-and-a-half to a three-year process, and you couldn't partially put this building back into service waiting for that new building."
Flames staffers who are unable to work from home will relocate to the Calgary Stampeders' headquarters this week. (The Flames also own the Canadian Football League squad.)
"No one in the city anticipated the gravity of this flood," said King. "Friday night, we were shocked and surprised when the flood came. It didn't come as a surprise that it was coming, but the depth of the devastation was unbelievable. We prepared as best we could."
In his opening remarks to reporters Saturday, King had pointed out that updates on the state of a hockey rink are trumped by the welfare of those who have been truly impacted by the disaster.
"Firstly, I would like — on behalf of our organization and all of our sports organizations — to express great sympathy for the loss of life to those people had that great tragedy and to everyone in this city who's facing many, many more challenges than we are down at the Saddledome," said King. "Ours is a piece a real estate, a building, but many people's lives have been dramatically altered here. I want to express our heartfelt sympathy and out-reach to those people."


text: Job Discussion Forums :: View topic - TESOL Spain 2005 Get TEFL Certified & Start Your Adventure Today! Job Discussion Forums"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!" FAQ Search Memberlist Usergroups Register Profile Log in to check your private messages Log in TESOL Spain 2005 Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Spain View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message sperlingSite AdminJoined: 22 Oct 2002Posts: 117Location: Los Angeles, California Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 2:26 am Post subject: TESOL Spain 2005 TESOL-SPAIN 28th. NATIONAL CONVENTION Cultures, Communities and Classrooms: Diversity in English Language Education. 11 - 13 March, 2005 Universidad de Sevilla, Facultad de Filología Seville, Spain Presentation Proposal Deadline: October 31, 2004 Contact: Tammi Santana Email: [email protected] Last booking Date for Pre-registration ends on March 1, 2005. May register on-site at an increased price. For more information: http://www.tesol-spain.org/convention2005 Back to top MadridTeacherJoined: 24 Aug 2005Posts: 2Location: Madrid Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 8:47 am Post subject: TESOL Spain 2006 Convention Hi everyone, The next TESOL Spain conference is in 2006. Here is the basic information: TESOL Spain 29th. National Convention - March 24-26, 2006 - "Voices in the classroom" Universidad Complutense, Facultad de Filología A, Madrid, Convention coordinator: Hilary Plass email: [email protected]. More info: http://www.tesol-spain.org/convention2006/index.html. Cheers .... and hope to see you there! Back to top MadridTeacherJoined: 24 Aug 2005Posts: 2Location: Madrid Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 4:47 pm Post subject: TESOL Madrid Conference Back to top SirKirbyJoined: 03 Oct 2007Posts: 261Location: Barcelona, Spain Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2007 7:18 am Post subject: Er... just wondering.... Shouldn't this post -- refering to an event two years ago -- be allowed to drop down off the top of the page? Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Spain All times are GMT Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Where to Begin----------------General DiscussionNewbie ForumCurrent Events ForumTechnology ForumOnline Teaching Forum Africa Forums----------------General Africa Forum Asia Forums----------------CambodiaChina (Job-related Posts Only)China (Off-Topic)Hong KongIndiaIndonesiaJapanMalaysiaPhilippinesSingaporeTaiwanThailandGeneral Asia ForumVietnam Caribbean Forums----------------General Caribbean Forum Europe Forums----------------Czech RepublicFranceGermanyGreeceItalyMacedonia and the BalkansPolandRomaniaRussia & C.I.S.SpainTurkeyUkraineUnited KingdomGeneral Europe Forum Latin America Forums----------------ArgentinaBrazilChileColombiaCosta RicaMexicoMexico (off-topic)PeruGeneral Latin America Forum The Middle East Forums----------------BahrainEgyptIsraelKuwaitOmanQatarSaudi ArabiaUnited Arab EmiratesGeneral Middle East Forum North America Forums----------------General North America Forum Oceania----------------Australia/New Zealand You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling. Contact Dave's ESL Cafe Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved. Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group Teaching Jobs in China

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit; Sister Vajira and Francis Story, trans. (DN 16); National Geographic ("Bones of Buddha" video)
|Famous later stupa, Boudanath in a suburb of Kathmandu, Nepal (~anup dreamynomad).
|There is a stupa in space, in the akasha deva loka, with a portion of the relics. It may look like Shitthuang Pagoda in the ruins of Mrauk U, Arakhine, Burma (Jon Sheer/Jraptor/flickr).
(National Geographic) "Bones of the Buddha" documentary on the discovery of one of the stupas or burial mounds (Buddhist reliquaries) in 1898 in British colonial India.
|First Buddha image? Bimaran reliquary.
Do the jewels, relic bones, and ashes found in an Indian casket and tomb in 1898 mark the final resting place of the Buddha himself? Or was it all an elaborate hoax?
When Colonial estate manager William Peppe set his workers digging at a mysterious "hill" in Northern India in 1898, he had no idea what they would find. Over 20 feet down, they made an amazing discovery: a huge stone coffer containing reliquary urns, over 1000 separate jewels, and some ash and bone. One of the jars had an inscription that seemed to say that these were the remains of the Buddha himself.
|Tour gathered relics for India
This seems to be a most extraordinary find in Indian archaeology. But doubt and scandal have hung over the amazing discovery for over 100 years.
For some, the whole thing is an elaborate hoax. For others, it is no less than the final resting place of the Maitreya/Messiah of one of the world's three great religions. For the doubters, suspicion focuses on...
For some, the whole thing is an elaborate hoax. For others, it is no less than the final resting place of the Maitreya/Messiah of one of the world's three great religions. For the doubters, suspicion focuses on...
|The Shakyans (Scythians) had a vast territory in Central Asia along the Silk Route.
|The Buddha Sakamuni of the Shakya clan was from Sakastan/Scythia north-west of "India."
The relics in the sutras
|What's inside Buddhist burial domes?
KUSINARA, ancient India - After the Buddha's passing into final nirvana (parinirvana, complete liberation from rebirth and the end of all suffering), the body was cremated and the ashes/relics divided.
Originally the ashes were only going to go to the Sakya clan -- the Buddha's extended royal family in Afghanistan (Scythia) and northwestern "India." However, seven royal (kshatriya caste) families demanded the body relics.
To avoid fighting, a monk divided the relics into ten portions, eight from the body relics, one from the ashes of Buddha's cremation pyre, and one from the bucket used to divide the relics, according to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (Long Discourses, DN 16).
After the Buddha's distribution the relics were enshrined and honored in royal burial mounds (reliquaries or stupas) by the royals of eight "countries" (janapadas, or "footholds of the clan," extended familial territories, republics and kingdoms before there was any "India") in this way -- one portion each to:
- King Ajatasattu of Magadha [son of the Buddhist King Bimbisara],
- the Licchavis of Vesali,
- the Shakyas of Kapilavastu [Bamiyan according to maverick historian Dr. Ranajit Pal, Kabul, and Mes Aynak, modern Afganistan, west of modern India and Pakistan, ancient Gandhara, according to the fact that the sutras describe the Shakyas as having three capitals in their Great Territory or maha-janapada, according to original research at Wisdom Quarterly]
- the Bulis of Allakappa
- the Koliyas of Ramagrama
- the Brahmin of Vethadipa [who made the partition of the relics and asked to keep one portion to honor with the building of a burial mound]
- the Mallas of Pava
- the Mallas of Kusinara [modern Kushinagar, the territory the Buddha purposely chose as a former great kingdom of the remote past, where he traveled by foot with Ven. Ananda to pass into final nirvana to avoid conflict or even war breaking out between competing kingdoms wishing to keep and honor the Buddha's remains and give them a special place of honor due to his great fame ("Asoka and the Buddha-Relics," ntu.edu.tw).
- [the devas in the akasha deva loka, that is, in a world in space, presumably a nearby planet]
- [uncertain but we will find out.]
|A royal Scythian burial
|The world famous Buddhas of Bamiyan from faraway Scythia/Afghanistan (Azaranica).
|The CIA as the Taliban or ISIS destroys.
[Why would there be Buddhist relics in Islamic Afghanistan? It is because the Buddha was from the area before it was called Afghanistan. And as their beloved prince he renounced and became a wandering ascetic who went to India to become enlightened. But he returned to help and teach his extended family and friends the path to liberation from all suffering. The Shakyans remembered him and honored him and many Shakyans became monastic-practitioners or great supporters of the Sangha and Dharma helping it spread north and west before it moved out of India where it was taking root.
We suggest that it took hold in Afghanistan and agrarian nomadic Central Asia before it caught on in Brahmin/Vedic-dominated "Indian" states. The story is usually that the Teachings traveled up the Silk Route from India passing through the waddle and daub villages of backward no man's land west of the kingdoms of modern NW India. The fact is that the Buddha returned home seven years after his enlightenment but his grand reputation as a sage (muni) preceded him and his wife, Yasodhara/Bimba Devi, was already practicing as an ascetic as she had been since he left.]
We suggest that it took hold in Afghanistan and agrarian nomadic Central Asia before it caught on in Brahmin/Vedic-dominated "Indian" states. The story is usually that the Teachings traveled up the Silk Route from India passing through the waddle and daub villages of backward no man's land west of the kingdoms of modern NW India. The fact is that the Buddha returned home seven years after his enlightenment but his grand reputation as a sage (muni) preceded him and his wife, Yasodhara/Bimba Devi, was already practicing as an ascetic as she had been since he left.]
|What remained prior to detonation (Azaranica).
Sometime in the middle of the 5th century the Chinese pilgrim Daorong traveled to the Buddhist kingdom of Afghanistan visiting pilgrimage sites. In Nagaharahara was a piece of bone from the top of Buddha's skull four inches long. Also in the city was an enshrined staff and a jeweled reliquary containing some teeth and hair. A shadow was said to have been projected onto a rock wall, said to have belonged to the Buddha, as well as a set of foot prints and a site venerated for being where the Buddha washed his robe.
A temple (vihara) said to have been built by the Buddha is sinking into the ground here, with what is said to be his writing on the wall (John S. Strong, 2007, Relics of the Buddha, p. xiii). A tooth of the Buddha was kept in Baktra (Strong 2007, p. 182).
|Bimaran casket reliquary placed in stone box.
In Bamiyan -- site of the destruction of the world's largest Buddha statues by the CIA/Taliban -- a tooth of the Buddha was stored along with the tooth of a cakravartin ("world monarch") ruler (), the two kinds of persons the Buddha said stupas were erected in remembrance of. An early masterpiece of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara and one of the earliest representations of the Buddha is the golden Bimaran casket, which was discovered in a burial mound near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.
Although the casket bears an inscription saying it contained some of the relics of the Buddha, no relics were discovered when the box was opened (Senior 2008, pp. 25-27). [Presumably they were taken by tomb robbers who somehow left the more obviously valuable gold and jewel-encrusted urn or devas teleported them elsewhere for safety.] The Buddha's first followers, Trapusa and Bhallika, received eight strands of hair from him, which they brought back to their home town of Balkh and enshrined in a golden stupa by the gate (Strong 2007, pp. 73-74). These relics from the Buddha just weeks after his great enlightenment went on to serve as the basis for the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda of Burma, a massive stupa complex.
|Famous Indian stupa or burial mound reliquary with ornate gate at Sanchi (flickr.com)
|Restoration of one of the great stupas, Sarnath outside of Varanasi (Benares)
Final Passing Into Nirvana Sutra
Sister Vajira and Francis Story, trans., Mahaparinibbana Sutta (DN 16)
Introduction: Of the 34 discourses (suttas or sutras) that make up the "Collection of Long Discourses" (Digha Nikaya), the 16th is the longest. It maintains first place where length is concerned.
- [It tells the story of "the Last Days of the Buddha" up to and beyond the final nirvana and what became of the monastic community (Sangha) and how the Buddha-Dharma was preserved and was transformed into a religion now called "Buddhism" by some prominent Brahmin monastics (like the enlightened elder Ven. Maha Kassapa), which never happened during the Buddha's life and dispensation, presumably by design as he was against religion, empty ritual, and the trappings of another -ism in the world.]
This discourse preserves the principal features of the Buddhist sutra insofar as it, like others, is a rehearsal of events that have been witnessed [by Ananda and/or others]. On account of its unique composition, however, it is, more than other sutra, capable not only of winning the affection of the confident Buddhist, as it naturally does, but also of attracting the general reader, because it is indeed a fine specimen of sacred universal literature.
|The rolling the true wheel of the Dharma to a stupa in the foothills of the Himalayas.
|Buddha walking (Nippon_newfie/flickr)
It gives a good general idea of the Buddha's Teaching, the Dharma, too, even though it hardly offers anything that is not found -- and often more extensively dealt with -- in other sutras that are more oriented toward teaching Dharma.
At the end of his life, after almost half a century's ministry [45 years of teaching and causing the liberating Dharma to be spread far and wide across time and space, much farther and wider than can be fathomed, as a buddha's influence is one of the Four Imponderables], the Teacher had long since taught all that was necessary for attaining the ideal [enlightenment/liberation or bodhi/nirvana].
During the last period his primary concern, therefore, was to impress on his followers the necessity of unflinchingly putting into practice those teachings: an appeal that could, of course, hardly fail in stirring their hearts [minds] more than ever before.
|The world's largest Buddha statue reclining into final nirvana remains unexcavated in the Buddha's homeland, modern Afghanistan, in a former capital at Bamiyan, ancient Scythia/Sakastan/Bactria (NatGeo).
The Sangha [both the monastic (communities of monks and nuns known as the Bhikkhu and Bhikkhuni Sanghas) and the more important "community" of enlightened/noble disciples or Arya Sangha] came, indeed, to witness the greatest event in its history, and was keenly aware of it, especially since the Teacher had announced his Parinibbana three months ahead.
The impression on the monastics who flocked to him in large numbers as he was pressing northward was tremendous and could not fail to be reflected vividly in the oral account. (The Buddhist canon was originally, as is well known, completely part of an oral rather than written tradition). Because of its particular import and abundance, this material was soon formed into one body, and so this long sutra came to be. More
- See the Buddha's relics Sept. 7, 2015, Lu Mountain, L.A.
- Marking Buddhist Observance Day by the Moon
- What is the Buddhist "Moonday" (uposatha)?
|A Scythian, royal kshatriya, burial with finery and ornate gold like the Shakyas (NatGeo).


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How Technology 'Accelerates Greatness'By CIOinsight
How Technology 'Accelerates Greatness'
Jim Collins, author of two landmark management books, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (HarperCollins, 1994) and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don't (HarperCollins, 2001), doesn't belong to the arm-waving school of management advice. His skill lies in performing powerful research that identifies the leaders, strategies and processes that make great and sustainable companies. Leaders who cannot sustain success tend to "sell the future to compensate for lack of results," he says.
Collins, a former McKinsey & Co. researcher, now runs a management lab in his hometown of Boulder, Colo., and says that technology matters to great companiesbut only after they've got all the other stuff working right. "Technology is an accelerator of mediocrity and decline as powerfully as it is an accelerator of greatness, but it's never the cause of either," he told Executive Editor Marcia Stepanek in a recent interview.
CIO INSIGHT: All of your work during the past 15 years has focused on one simple dichotomythe difference between good and great companies. How do great companies use technology differently?
COLLINS: When we were working on the research for Built to Last, we found that technology pioneers tended, over time, to become the good companiesbut not the great ones. In other words, there was an inverse correlation between early technological leadership and becoming an enduringly great company. Take General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Corp. Westinghouse had the early technological lead and ended up with the superior technology. Yet it was GE that became the great company. In the creation of the Internet, the technology pioneer was not America Online Inc. AOL was a laggard. The early pioneers were CompuServe Interactive Services Inc. and Prodigy Inc.and where are they today?
In the Good to Great study, similar results surfaced. Consider Nucor Corp., a steel mini-mill. The conventional view is that Nucor pioneered mini-mill technology and used that as a torpedo to blow Bethlehem Steel Corp. and the others out of the water. But when we asked Ken Iverson of Nucor to name the top five factors that enabled Nucor to go from good to great, where do you think he put technology? Well, it wasn't first, it wasn't third, it wasn't fourth, and it wasn't even fifth. In fact, more than 80 percent of executives we interviewed for Good to Great didn't even mention technology in the top five factors.
The application of technology is neither the cause of greatness nor the cause of decline. Technology is an accelerator of greatness already in place, never the cause of it. Technology, as in the case of Bethlehem Steel, is an accelerator of mediocrity and decline, never the cause of it. What our data taught us is that technology cannot, does not, will not make a company great. But technology is necessary once you are already great to accelerate that greatness to another level.
The Flywheel Manifesto
The Flywheel Manifesto
Yet we're always being told that great companies are those that have successfully aligned technology in the service of boosting the business.
Most management thinking suffers because it starts from a churchthe church of technology, the church of strategy, the church of culture, the church of revolution, the church of whatever the church happens to be. The approach in these cases is to say, "Well, what we're going to do is figure out how technology applies, the role of culture, the role of alignment and so forth." Ask me, though, and I'm purely agnostic. I come from no church. To serve the business best, what you want to do is discover. Instead of starting with an input variable, we actually start with an output variable: stock charts, because ultimately, from a company standpoint, the big question is, how do you change your cumulative returns to investors and go from one performance level to another, and stay there? If technology drives that, great. If it doesn't, great. If culture does, great. If leadership does, great. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the question is, what are the inputs that drive those outcomes?
Picture a huge, heavy flywheel, a metal disk the size of a city block and about 30 feet thicka massive piece of metal sitting on an axle. And imagine that your task is to get that flywheel turning as fast as possible, to take it from standing still or just puttering along to truly break through the momentum. You start pushing on that flywheel in an intelligent, consistent direction, and you keep pushing on it, and after a whole lot of work, you finally get one giant, slow, creaky turn. Then you keep pushing on that flywheel, and you get another big giant, slow, creaky turn number two, and then four, and then eight. Eventually, you go from 8 to 16, 16 to 32, 32 to 64, 64 to 128, the thing starts to build this momentum turn upon turn upon turn, push upon pushand then at some point, bang! You can feel all that cumulative weight behind you starting to add up, and the flywheel starts to pick up more and more speed, more and more momentum, and you keep pushing in that intelligent, consistent direction, and whoosh!that thing hits 1,000 RPMs, 10,000 RPMs, a million RPMs. And then all of a sudden, bang! You've hit this point of real breakthrough.
Now that flywheel image of buildup leading to breakthrough is exactly what it feels like to take a company or any organization from good to great. Technology accelerates your momentum after you've hit breakthrough. If you're trying to use technology as a way to jump-start things, to go from 2 RPMs to 200 RPMs right away, it never works.
The flywheel process breaks into three basic stages. Stage one is disciplined people, stage two is disciplined thought, and stage three is disciplined action. Technology falls into stage three, disciplined action.
When David Maxwell became CEO of Fannie Mae, it was losing $1 million every business day with $56 billion of loans under water. The board asked David, "What are you going to do?" He said, "That's the wrong question." It was the wrong first question, actually. He decided that he wasn't going to figure out what he was going to do or where his company was going to drive this bus until he figured out who should be on the bus, who should be off the bus, and who should be in what seats. And only when he decided that did he turn to the question of where Fannie Mae was going to drive the bus.
We found that as companies become great, the people who built them were always "who" people first and "what" people second. They always thought first in terms of "who" and then in terms of "what." Technology is a "what" question. It comes later. No technology can turn the wrong people into the right people. And remember: People are not your most important asset. The right people are. It's like the Indy 500. Eighty percent of it is the driver and the team, and only 20 percent of it is the car. Ultimately, everybody pretty much gets the same cars anyway.
And that alone can guarantee IT alignment?
If a company has an alignment gap, then it must have skipped some earlier stages of evolution in its corporate development.
What we found is that if you get the right people on the bus, have disciplined thought and disciplined action, then you're aligned from the startand you stay there. Everyone's turning the same flywheel in the same direction and benefiting from the same momentum. The gap simply wasn't a problem for these companies because it was just the very next stage as things began to unfold.
Do you have the right people on the bus? The wrong people off the bus? A clear, simple concept that pulls everybody in the same direction to turn the flywheel? Have you built a culture of discipline as opposed to just having a culture of bureaucracy or a culture of entitlement? If any of those are missing, you're going to have an alignment gap on all kinds of things, not just technology. You're going to find an alignment gap in tactics versus strategy. You're going to find an alignment gap in how your acquisitions merge in. You're going to have more gaps than you can manage.
One of the key questions we asked every one of the executives for our Good to Great research was how they got alignment among all functions in a company. It wasn't a popular question. One day, my researchers came in, and they sort of threw their binders down on the table in frustration, and they told me that the executives who made these great companies thought it was a stupid question. In fact, a lot of them didn't even understand the question.
Why Initiatives Fail
Why Initiatives Fail
Why, then, do companies with good cultures and the right people keep embarking on technology initiatives that fail?
Because there's no disciplined thought behind them. Remember when the Internet came along? Take Walgreen Co. Everybody was talking about how Walgreen was going to be toast. But they should have looked closer. Walgreen hit breakthrough in 1975, and about 1985 it began to accelerate the flywheel with some key technologies. So it's humming along, the flywheel's spinning fine, and bang! We hit the mid-1990s. The Internet comes along. Walgreen looked at the Internet and said, "We're a crawl-walk-run company, and our response to the Internet is going to be crawl-walk-run." So, Walgreen wasn't too worried about drugstore.com, which went from run to walk to crawl. Walgreen stood back and, with disciplined thought, confronted the brutal facts of the Internet. It knew it didn't understand the Internet and needed time to figure it out. So it crawled at first. Of course, Walgreen has ultimately prevailed in its application of the Internet. Meanwhile, drugstore.com is no serious threat.
Now, companies like Walgreen sizing up the Internet, or The Kroger Co. thinking about whether scanning technology applies, or Fannie Mae thinking about applying expert systems for risk assessment for mortgage lending, they're not taking the technology in isolation. What they're doing is always tying their technology back to a fundamental business model. We learned that the fundamental business model that drives that flywheel to breakthrough momentum is one that reflects deep understanding of three things: one, what the company is passionate about; two, what it can do better than any other company in the world; and three, what best drives its economic engine.
Technology only helps when you understand that, and you harness your technology back to those three concepts. Any technology that is not harnessed to those three concepts is just technology for technology's sake.
Many companies have gotten to the stage of trying to use technology to cut costs, boost profits and innovate. But time and again, they run smack into cultural problems as they implement these technologies. Can technology make it harder to be great?
Well, first of all, we found virtually no evidence of cultural resistance among great companies, but we found lots of it in the comparison companies. Great companies always began with the question, "Do we have the right people?" A "right" person, fundamentally, is someone who understands that they do not have a job, they have a responsibility. Big difference. If an air traffic controller were to say, "I did my job right, but the airplane crashed," it doesn't really matter whether he did his job right. The airplane crashed. That controller has a responsibility to make sure the planes don't crash.
The cornerstone of the cultures in great companies wasn't just that they had a culture. They had a culture of discipline, one where people have a wide amount of freedom within the context of very stiff responsibilities. If you have a very stiff responsibility, you're responsible for the lives of people on that plane. How would you respond if someone said, "I can give you better information that will help you keep those people alive and planes from crashing?" If you view it as, "I have a job," then you're more likely to react to the new technology by saying, "I have too much to deal with already." But, if you're the type of person who believes that you need every tool and every piece of information you can gather to execute your responsibility, then your response to information is that you need more of it to execute your responsibility, rather than just to survive your job.
So the amount of information at your disposal does ultimately matter?
Not at all. We found no evidence at allnonethat the Good to Great companies had more or better information than the comparison companies. When you look over economic history and comparisons of companies in the same industryWalgreen to Eckerd Corp., Abbott Laboratories to The Upjohn Co., Nucor to Bethlehem Steel, and so onyou don't find that the great company had this key information that the comparison company didn't. You actually find that in any given industry, information starts to be pretty widely available. There's really not a lot of mystery, and people tend to collect the same kinds of information. They may have better systems or whatever, but fundamentally pretty much everyone has the same key pieces of information. So what's different? The key is how you turn information from just plain information into information that cannot be ignored.
Bruce Woolpert, CEO at [construction materials company] Granite Rock Co., initiated what he called "Short Pay." At the bottom of every customer invoice, he gave customers the chance to decide whetherand how muchto pay, based on their satisfaction level. It says at the bottom of the invoice, if there's anything you're not completely satisfied with, identify the item, deduct the amount from the total and send Granite Rock a check for the balance. Imagine something like that on your airline ticket stub! Woolpert now has a very powerful customer information system that turns customer data into information that absolutely cannot be ignored.
I think the fundamental principles of what it takes to build a great company, like the laws of physics, don't change. But the engineering, the practices, the ways we need to do it need to be continually evolving.


text:
The smoking adventures on the Big Green Egg continues… this time with trout. I wanted to venture out with another type of fish since I've smoked salmon [we're a big fan of smoked salmon] every weekend since I purchased the Big Green Egg, which was almost four weeks ago.
I bought four whole trouts yesterday, excited to cure and smoke it. But when I got home, I didn't realize that the pin bones and spine were still intact. Ugh. I felt almost immediately overwhelmed by the idea of removing the bones. I YouTubed some videos on how to filet trout, and got right in. [YouTube always comes in handy for situations like this!] Luckily, the sweet filet knife I recently got came in handy for this daunting task. It took some time and hacking at the fish before I got the hang of deboning and fileting fish. Needless to say, I finished without cutting myself [unfortunately, I accidentally cut myself often in the kitchen… it's a combination of clumsiness + hurriedness], throwing swear words left and right, or giving up , but all four fileted fish looked pretty hacked up.
The final score:
Me 4
Trout 0
Smoked Trout on the Big Green Egg
3 pounds trout, about 3 to 5 ounces each, skin on, pin bones and spine removed, and fileted
1/3 cup kosher salt
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 tablespoon black pepper
6 garlic cloves, finely minced
In a small mixing bowl, combine the all the ingredients above and mix thoroughly. Liberally pack the trout filets with the brown sugar mixture. Place in a shallow glass baking dish, and cover tightly with saran wrap, and refrigerate for two hours.
Rinse the trout under cold water to remove the brine. Dry the salmon with a paper towel, and allow it to dry in the refrigerator, uncovered. It should dry for a couple of hours up to 24 hours to develop the pellicle (shiny skin) on the surface of the fish. [I allowed mine to dry in the refrigerator for 12 hours.]
Fire up your smoker per the manufacturer's instructions and your favorite wood chips [I used alder; hickory or mesquite would be too potent for seafood] to around 180 to 220 degrees F. Smoke for about 3 hours. Remove from smoker, allow to cool, and enjoy it with some creme fraiche, cream cheese, on a salad, or pick at it like we did 🙂


text:
Morley Field
San Diego, California 1 course · 19 holes Driving directions
Course reviews
Most votes | Newest first | Oldest first
+1 votes Chris Leo › April 19, 2012
Grounds crew was setting up sprinklers, cleaning debri, raking and sweeping tee pads as we pulled in shortly after 6 am. Minimum of four pin placements per hole, nice little pro shop as well. $3 for all day play is well worth it! Like stated before get here as early as you can or be prepared to wait. Very friendly locals here.
+1 votes Jesse Henderson › December 2, 2010
Course is amazing. Constantly changes! A++ Constantly overcrowded! F- Bring your patience or come before 8am.
+1 votes chris quylow › November 28, 2015
Lots of trees and busy. Nice challenging changing basket lines. Make sure you can throw a hizor. Love it.
+1 votes christopher Hanna › November 15, 2012
learned how to play on this course...became a course pro after my first year of playing...total of 29 aces at this course ranging from 150ft to 430ft
+0 votes Shai Simonson › June 2, 2020
Amazing course. Disc golf heaven!
+0 votes Aaron Van Matre › October 29, 2010
+0 votes Adam Freedman › April 12, 2015
Morely is a great little course. Mostly medium distance shots with some technical difficulty and good use of the elevation changes. Very cool that they change the pin locations weekly, keeps it interesting.. only downside is the traffic, it is absolutely filled with casuals during most of the times you would want to play..
+0 votes Gary Player › January 18, 2011
great course--too much traffic.
+0 votes Adam Mitchell › February 15, 2016
GET THERE EARLY! 6:30am EARLY! Lots-o-people but great amenities.
+0 votes dan schmidt › November 18, 2010
I was so excited to play this course, It was so crowded and so late in the day but I played with a local guy who made sure I was able to get in the whole round. THX Dave
+0 votes Brian Tibbetts › August 21, 2011
+0 votes Dan Chando › July 17, 2017
What an amazing disc golf course, definitely has that proper "golf course" feel with the pro-shop, putting areas, super nice cards, cart girl etc... They just put in brand new Innova Discatcher baskets, and the tee pads were all concrete with rubber mats. With a minimum of 5 pin placements on each hole that change every Monday, you can essentially play a new course every week. It was a little crowded but not too bad, although I played in the early afternoon, when I finished it looked quite a bit more busy. Super solid course, I would definitely go back!
+0 votes eric h › May 4, 2011
+0 votes kyle f › December 30, 2010
moving back to Nor Cal and i will miss hitting this course weekly! thanks guys for the great time! Best course ive played just got to be willing to share its always busy
+0 votes Markus Mika › March 15, 2014
+0 votes Benjamin Boyer › April 29, 2011
Great course, get there early cause after 10:00 a.m. there are tons of people...
+0 votes Billy Romhild › August 22, 2011
+0 votes Jerry Thacker › April 28, 2012
+0 votes Kirby SoX › April 21, 2011
if disc golf community and family are what your looking for morley is your home where your family is always waiting for you with a smile!
+0 votes Caleb Shor › July 4, 2011
+0 votes xaeLen n › July 23, 2011
+0 votes quiLLan n › July 22, 2014
+0 votes WP Naes › December 24, 2013
+0 votes Drew Ski › July 14, 2012
+0 votes J Lowe › September 5, 2011
Busy, but great place to burn some time.
+0 votes Judd D › September 26, 2011
+0 votes Billy Matthews › December 11, 2011
Calm and fantastic. Worth the few bucks to play. Arrive at 6am on a Wednesday and you will be fine. Lots of basket locations on almost every hole that are changed daily.
+0 votes Tyler Franklin › March 27, 2018
Only reason that this course didn't get an A+ is because of the lack of quality teepads. They are not bad. But not good either. Everything else about this course is top notch. It is extreamly crowded but personally, I don't factor that into my course grade. I'll be back someday. Probably when I'm retired and have the time to travel to this part of the world again.
+0 votes Tyler T › February 15, 2012
Awesome course except the $$ and the waits
+0 votes Joe Rodriguez › April 9, 2012
Great course. Its even better in the early morning before the crowds after 9. Everyone is very friendly in showing this new disc golfer how to play. It is challenging enough to use all the discs in your bag. With all the trees I wish they would re-paint the baskets with brighter colors or they would put flags on some of baskets.
+0 votes Mike Tobin › September 4, 2012
+0 votes Cody Vanhevel › November 23, 2017
+0 votes mike jones › May 29, 2013
I liked the way its set up with the several pin locations for each hole. It was a little crowded but the locals were very helpful helping this newcomer navigate this beautiful course. I look forward to playing this course again.
+0 votes Larry Hibbitts › July 11, 2016
Was in town on business, and thought I would check this course out. Gorgeous course. I'm insanely jealous of the southern CA weather. The layout is not very intuitive, so I was happy a group of local players let me join them. Would definitely play this again if I was in the area.
+0 votes Corey Matthysse › April 3, 2018
+0 votes Jeff Herter › January 28, 2013
This is a great course. I love the layout even though the fairways intersect often. Everyone is super friendly and helpful when an Iowa boy gets lost. Keep your head on a swivel when you hear "FORE!" and remember to shout "clear" when you chain out.
+0 votes Harold Berciunas › June 26, 2012
+0 votes Brian Vogel › January 14, 2013
Great Course but packed into a small space. Saw a guy get hit today. Used a lot of shots and still got to bomb some drives.
+0 votes Coda Turner › April 25, 2013
This course is amazing. Long drives to short technical holes. Sometimes overcrowded, but everyone is really cool.
+0 votes Eric Moser › June 11, 2014
+0 votes DETROIT J › April 11, 2013
+0 votes Chris DND Leonard › September 1, 2020
Overcrowded. Vastly improved with new baskets.
+0 votes Tim Freer › November 25, 2013
Great course, great staff and a very challenging course.
+0 votes Christopher Fanger › March 10, 2015
Awesome, amazing time with Carlos and Sean aka stretch
+0 votes Tom Bundy › November 20, 2013
+0 votes ROLF HEBENSTREIT › February 12, 2014
+0 votes Joe Hewlett › September 15, 2015
The place where I learned to play when it was called Frisbee Golf. Wham-O sponsored all events and only their plastic could be used. Many birdie opportunities. Redesign over the years has added challenging pin placements. Unfortunately they lost a lot of space. Some cross-play. Always gridlocked. Always fun disc golf.
+0 votes Alex Olguin › February 18, 2014
The quality of the course is good, well maintained year round with constantly changing baskets. However, there's a 15 minute wait on each hole and fairways crisscross dangerously. Fore!
+0 votes Alan K › February 19, 2014
+0 votes Spencer Pellant › August 23, 2018
When I played, the course was very wet, however they had a towel available for purchase at the clubhouse.
+0 votes marvin wash › May 30, 2014
Played here during the fires and 100+ degree heat, it's a nice and pretty short course with a bunch of trees to foil your shots. Crowded, even during a hot, smoky day, but the natives were friendly. Limited parking, unless you want to walk a bit of a distance. Refreshments available where you pay your small fee to play. Lost a disc there and they called me the next day after it was found (cool, thanks). Will play it again, next time I visit.
+0 votes Chris Nixon › June 26, 2014
Very well maintained and organized. The only slightly negative thing is that there are not any longer holes.
+0 votes Kyle Adams › June 24, 2014
+0 votes Mike Fiske › December 14, 2016
Course was fun, played with Jesse Bickley, one of Logans competitors during Worlds last summer. He had me by two until hole 17, then I somehow four-putted to blow the round. Still fun.
+0 votes Joshua Gonzalez › January 2, 2015
Very nice course more technical not as long distance but pretty awesome a must play if you are ever in San Diego
+0 votes Mike Lamb › November 26, 2014
Can be crowded. Still awesome.
+0 votes paul kris › November 7, 2015
Played the De La Vega course a lot in Santa Cruz and this is nice too
+0 votes Steve Simison › February 19, 2017
Beautiful disc golf only course, good mix of long & short holes & a lot of challenging pin locations.
+0 votes Kevin Ducas › September 16, 2016
Awesome course. Very challenging. Course is in perfect shape.
+0 votes James Szabo › October 13, 2016
+0 votes travis tapley › December 22, 2016
busiest disc golf course in the country
+0 votes Reuben Pollard › September 15, 2017
+0 votes Ruthie Stauffer › August 25, 2019
+0 votes Matthew Lawrence › August 15, 2017
+0 votes Rob Hoisington › July 31, 2018
Great course, well maintained, loved it. Local golfer Alan played a round and helped out with the basket locations.
+0 votes William Lynch › November 21, 2017
+0 votes Brentt 2 T's Dellek › November 12, 2019
+0 votes Junior Neri › December 13, 2018
Hole 11 & 12 are muddy AF. Careful, most people were walking around and getting to the tee pad from hole 2. And some people even skipped it, yeah they're that bad.


text:
- Description
DetailsTuck your keys in this whimsical pouch and your pockets and bags will be safe from their impact. Named after the Gaul heroes Asterix and Obelix as the latter carried his menhir around with him everywhere.
- Additional Information
Additional Information
Weight 36.0000 Bag style No Color 2 15685


text:
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text:
When the next secretary of the U.S. Navy walks
into the job, he or she will immediately face a
list of budgetary, political and other challenges that
will undoubtedly vie for their attention during the
early days of the Obama administration.
At press time, President Barack Obama had not yet
selected the top civilian leader for any of the military
services. But whoever the Navy nominee is, that person will have to grapple with a wide range of issues
that have vexed the service for years.
One Navy analyst said the problems are not historic
in their gravity and are probably common to any
changeover in administration. But the weight of the
lingering issues, coupled with a faltering economy that
could put additional pressure on the defense budget,
could be time-consuming for whoever assumes the
helm of the Navy.
Topping the list, analysts say, will be attempts to
right a shipbuilding program that many fear has wandered off course, despite the ever-watchful and often
critical eye of outgoing Navy Secretary Donald C.
Winter, who will stay on until March 13 unless
relieved before then.
"A likely major challenge for the next secretary of
the Navy will be to fix current problems in Navy shipbuilding — a part of Navy acquisition that has been the
subject of much criticism, and where the Navy's credibility has taken a considerable beating in the last couple of years," said Ron O'Rourke, a Navy analyst at the
Congressional Research Service.
Despite the often critical eye of Navy Secretary Donald C.
Winter, here testifying before the Senate Appropriations
Committee for Defense on the 2009 national defense
budget request March 5, Navy shipbuilding program problems have persisted. Getting these programs back on
course will be one of the major challenges facing whoever
succeeds Winter as secretary.
Areas of concern in shipbuilding,
he said, include cost growth and
overruns, construction problems and
deficiencies, year-to-year changes in
the shipbuilding plan, the affordability of the plan and accountability for
problems in shipbuilding programs.
In a November speech at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Winter himself bemoaned
problems with shipbuilding and encouraged the Navy to develop a new
"quality culture" to guide programs
through design and procurement.
Winter also suggested that
future Navy officials invest more
heavily in the service's acquisition
and systems engineering work
force. And, because there is now
little competition for top programs, he recommended the Navy
use profit incentives to motivate
contractors to stay on track.
Additionally, Winter, who took a
tough-love approach to shipbuilding, stressed the importance of accountability.


text:
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman has been ordered to stay away from his ex-wife after he allegedly attacked her last month.
Michelle Rodman obtained a temporary ban against the retired basketball player after he allegedly entered her house on May 28 and shoved her when she refused to let him near his 11-year-old son.
Michelle Rodman appeared in an Orange County, California court on Thursday to request that the judge make the ban permanent. On the stand, she claimed Rodman was drunk when he barged into her home at 2.30 a.m. and pushed her onto a bed when she would not let him see his son D.J.
Rodman is expected to appear in court when the hearing continues today, reports TMZ.
The former couple wed in 2003, but Michelle Rodman filed for divorce to end their marriage a year later.


text:
VANCOUVER - Stick a fork in the Vancouver Canucks. They are done.
In a collapse of epic proportions. Vancouver coughed up a 3-0 third-period lead Monday night and lost 7-4 to the New York Islanders.
You can kiss the playoffs goodbye. Of course many of the team's fans had already done that.
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"I'm blown away, I can't (explain it)," centre Ryan Kesler said in a sombre Vancouver dressing room. "Seven goals in the third period, two points that we need, giving up a 3-0 lead. . .It's the National Hockey League. It can't happen."
But it did and the way the Canucks collapsed in the third seemed to symbolize a season that can now be declared officially lost.
The Canucks seemed to be headed for their first two-game winning streak since mid-January when they carried a 3-0 lead into the third at Rogers Arena.
But the Islanders scored four goals, three of them on the power play, in the first 6:22 of the third period to take the lead and then got the winner from Matt Martin 10 seconds after Vancouver defenceman Chris Tanev had tied the game 4-4 at 9:54 of the third.
Such a devastating loss, against one of the worst teams in the NHL, should end any hope the Canucks are going to make any kind of serious playoff push over their final 15 games.
Kesler said he's not ready to hoist the white flag.
"I mean, you have to give them credit, but let's be honest, that is not one of the top teams in the league," he said. "They battled hard, they played hard, but being up 3-0 and blowing it like that, it's embarrassing.
"It's the story of the past two months. We have to figure it out here quick or we're all going to be packing our bags and going home for the summer real quick here. I'm not done. I want to make the playoffs, I know the guys in the room want to. We have to start acting like it. . .I can't even wrap my head around it right now. It's embarrassing."
Josh Bailey, Ryan Strome, Calvin de Haan, all on the power play, and Frans Nielsen scored in the first 6:22 of the third to put the Islanders in front.
Tanev tied it when his shot from the right point rattled off both posts and past New York goalie Evgeni Nabokov.
But Martin then quickly beat Vancouver goalie Eddie Lack on a backhand to restore the New York lead. Anders Lee scored an insurance goal at 11:45 and Cal Clutterbuck scored into an empty net with 18 seconds remaining. The Canucks were booed off the ice by the fans who were still in the building.
"The guys played well enough in front of me," Lack said. "I think I have to make two or three saves there and I take responsibility for this loss."
The seven goals surrendered by the Canucks in the third matches a franchise record for most given up in one period. Twice in the 1980s, the Edmonton Oilers torched the Canucks for seven goals in a period. But those teams had Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri and company. Bryan Trottier and Mike Bossy were not in the lineup Monday night for the Islanders.
""I've never been in a game like that as far as seeing a period like that because we were playing so well. We really put ourselves in a jam with some bad penalties and they gained momentum," said coach John Tortorella. "What could happen, happened and it's been going on for a little while here since the turn of the year. Somehow we have to try and put it behind us. I'm not going to say it's going to be easy. That's a tough loss for us.
"This is a kick in the teeth and it is certainly going to take a little bit more than the normal coaches' speak to move by it. This is a tough one to eat."
The Canucks now must try and gather themselves for a four-game road trip that begins Wednesday night in Winnipeg.
"It's tough to put into words what happened," said Vancouver defenceman Kevin Bieksa. "I have never seen anything like that before. It feels terrible and I honestly don't know what happened.
"It's probably going to sit with us for a bit and sting and then we'll come tomorrow, have a practice and get focused for Winnipeg."
The Canucks remain in 10th place, four points behind the Dallas Stars and three back of the Phoenix Coyotes. Dallas has three games in hand on Vancouver. Phoenix has two games in hand on the Canucks.
The Canucks lost despite scoring two power-play goals of their own and getting the first goal in 24 games from captain Henrik Sedin.
Henrik's goal, which came at 4:52 of the second period, gave Vancouver a 2-0 lead. He fought off a check by defenceman Lubomir Visnovsky and banked a shot from the side of the net off Nabokov.
It wasn't pretty, but Henrik didn't seem to mind. He hadn't scored since Dec. 14 and when the puck crossed the goal line he lifted his arms into the air and looked toward the heavens.
Kesler made it 3-0 at 8:53 of the second when he scored Vancouver's second power-play goal of the night. Kesler scored on a rebound after a shot from in close by Bieksa hit the post.
The Canuck power play gave Vancouver a 1-0 lead at 15:46 of the first period. After defenceman Yannick Weber's shot from the top of the left faceoff circle rattled off the far post, Chris Higgins fought for position in front of the net and managed to backhand a shot over Nabokov.
The Canucks built up a 3-0 lead after 40 minutes on goals by Chris Higgins, Ryan Kesler and Henrik Sedin before an epic third-period collapse in which they were outscored 7-1. Islanders Josh Bailey, Ryan Strome and Calvin de Haan netted power-play goals 2:13 apart, Frans Nielsen scored one second after another power play before Chris Tanev pulled the Canucks even. Ten seconds later, Matt Martin put the Isles back on top for keeps. Anders Lee and Cal Clutterbuck (empty net) added the icing.
The seven third-period goals allowed by the Canucks tied a dubious team record set twice by the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers (once in 1983-84, the other in 1985-86)... The Canucks lost for the seventh this season when leading after two periods (17-5-2) while the Islanders improved to 8-22-2 when trailing after 40 minutes...Alex Burrows's goal drought reached 35 games but he did earn a second-period assist to reach 300 points for his career... Chris Tanev manageD to emerged from the night as a plus-1.
Henrik Sedin appeared in his 999th regular-season game Monday... Monday's outing marked the first time since Jan. 26 – 14 games ago – that three different Canuck forwards scored on the same night... The Islanders had six rookies in their lineup: defencemen Calvin de Haan and Matt Donovan, forwards Ryan Strome, Anders Lee and Mike Halmo and backup goalie Anders Nilsson ...
The Canucks have a practice scheduled for Tuesday at Rogers Arena before they fly off to Winnipeg where they open a four-game road trip Wednesday. The trip will continue Friday in Washington, Sunday in Florida (against old pal Roberto Luongo) before concluding Monday in Tampa Bay. The road has not been a happy place lately for the Canucks as they have lost seven straight in regulation. In their last 13 away from Rogers Arena, they are 1-11-1, the lone win (2-1) coming in Edmonton Jan. 21.
...Elliott Pap
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text:
Well I am a big chicken. I got so worked up about my scan appointment that I couldn't go. I felt absolutely awful about it. I have a feeling that anyone else with agoraphobia would have bit the bullet and went for the sake of their wee baby. But i just couldn't do it. It has been a very stressful time and as the date approached I was getting more and more anxious about it. The night before the scan I didn't sleep a wink. I felt very sick and the start of a panic attack was looming over me.
I visualised the drive and tried to imagine all the excitement and happiness to be gained, I listened to relaxation cds and told myself i was excited about the appointment, i think i was trying to trick my brain.
We had had a week of fantastic sunny weather and since the weather plays a huge part in my mood i prayed for sunshine. I watched the weather reports on the days leading up to the scan in the hope that the sun would shine and everything would seem just a little easier. On Tuesday morning when i knew it was time to get up i looked out of the window. It was the most gloomy grey wet day we have had in weeks. I started to get dressed but the feeling of impossibility just wouldn't go away. I definitely had my negative head on and no matter how hard I fought it, it wasn't going away either. I know myself and I know my limits. I knew that in my current state I would probably get half way but that would be as far as I got.
I broke the news to my mum and i felt extremely guilty. She was coming along as the expectant grandparent looking to see her little grandson/daughter for the first time. Gerald parents were also aware of my appointment, as were all my friends. They were going to think I was pathetic.
I called the hospital and they said they would get back to me but everything sounded so uncertain. Now i had reached 12 weeks and had only ever seen a midwife once, and that was only to confirm my pregnancy. I called my doctors to arrange an appointment with the midwife asap only to be told shes fully booked for a month. I knew i couldn't wait that long. Anything could be going on inside me. Was the baby even there? Having miscarried last year that has been gnawing at my brain constantly. I knew i needed to be seen and the sooner the better.
I called the hospital again and explained the situation. They couldn't have been nicer. I am actually really surprised with how well they have handled it. Today a midwife turned up at my house and took all my blood tests. We went over lots of information and then she had a feel of my tummy. I was prepared to ask her if she could have a listen for the heartbeat, but I didn't have to ask. As she brought out the machine she warned me not to panic. Being only 12 weeks pregnant, there was a high chance that they wouldn't hear anything but she assured me she would try her best. She also told me that it may take her quite some time to find anything and so i would just have to be patient. But it was within 5 seconds of the Doppler hitting my tummy that we heard it. Dum Dum, Dum Dum, Dum Dum. It was unbelievable. My little baby was in there loud and proud. I smiled and laughed I was just in total awe. The midwife said herself that she couldn't believe how easy it had been to find and how strong it sounded. Then she told me that they are arranging me to be scanned in my local doctors as they have found a portable scanning unit.
Now I don't like to think of people running about after me but I have to admit I am massively relieved. My pregnancy is going ahead like every other woman out there and i don't have to go to the hospital at all so can avoid all the stress of travelling a great distance. The midwife told me that my consultant is a lovely man who is very understanding of my situation and that he is bending over backwards to help me. I don't have to tell you how grateful I am.
So tonight as I write I am happier and calmer than i have been in weeks.
I had been dying to tell you the news sooner but I had to be sure all was ok. It has been a very difficult time. Obviously you have read about the breakdown of my relationship and I think i discovered I was pregnant the very next day after writing that post. So you can imagine how shocked I was. I have had days were I have been filled with panic about how I can cope. My body is no longer within my control and since I am such a control freak this has been hard to get used to. I didn't want a bump! I didn't want to feel something move inside of me. What if it was wriggling about and I didn't like it and couldn't make it stop? I was just being neurotic as always and as the days and weeks have passed I have looked forward to my tummy expanding, although it is doing it at such a rapid rate that it is welcome to slow down a little ha. Also I am wise enough to know that babies don't make relationships work and so it looks like I am going it alone. The house hunting is continuing but all the necessary people know i am now expecting and so i hope to be offered something as soon as possible. Then i can start building my wee nest. My next appointment isn't for 4 weeks but I should receive a letter about my scan before that. Hopefully I will have a picture to post soon.
Thanks for all your lovely comments. It was lovely to hear from people who have never written before and I am glad to share my happy news.


text:
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Christmas 2013
The Christmas Story
Told by Maeli McFarlane
The McFarlane's Euro Bucket List
1. Eat a brat in Germany
Heidelburg, Germany
2. Take a stroll through the La Petite France neighborhood
Strasbourg, France
Strasbourg, France
3. Try a beignet like Tiana makes in Disney's "The Princess and the Frog"
Strasbourg, France
Strasbourg, France
4. View the lights & "Singing Christmas Tree"
Zurich, Switzerland
Zurich, Switzerland
5. Take a drive through the Swiss Alps
6. Visit the Neuschwanstein Castle that inspired Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle
Schwangau, Germany
Schwangau, Germany
7. Ride a cable car to the top of Mount Untersberg
Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg, Austria
8. Go ice skating in Mozart Square in Old Town Salzburg
Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg, Austria
9. Watch the Glockenspiel go off at Marienplatz Square
Munich, Germany
Munich, Germany
10. Try German Kinderpunsch
Munich, Germany
Munich, Germany
11. Visit the Christmas markets in Germany
12. See the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London
London, England
12. See the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London
London, England
13. Visit Hamley's Toy Store
London, England
14. Take an open-top bus tour
London, England
15. Watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace
London, England
16. See the life-size model of a blue whale at the Natural History Museum
London, England
17. Take a stroll through Hyde Park
London, England
18. See the street performers at Covent Garden
London, England
19. Attend the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
20. See the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum
Paris, France
21. Shop Paris's flea markets
Paris, France
22. Leave a note for Quasimodo in the bell tower at Notre Dame
Paris, France
23. Lock down our love at the Love Lock Bridge
Paris, France
24. Watch a marionette puppet show at Luxembourg Gardens
Paris, France
25. Charter a toy sailboat in the ponds of Paris
Paris, France
26. Ride the carousel at the base of the Eiffel Tower
Paris, France
27. Explore the Catacombs beneath the city of Paris
Paris, France
28. Row a boat through the Grand Canal at the Palace of Versailles
Paris, France
29. Explore Paris's Covered Passages
Paris, France
30. Eat macaroons at the original Laduree in Paris
Paris, France
31. Bike the final leg of the Tour de France, the Champs-Elysees
Paris, France
32.Visit the land of Ryan's ancestors
33. Try Haggis in Scotland
Loch Lomand, Scotland
34. Roam the hills of Faerie Glen
Faerie Glen, Isle of Skye, Scotland
35. Visit Tinker Bell at the Fairy Pools
Fairy Pools, Isle of Skye, Scotland
36. Search for Nessy at Loch Ness
Loch Ness, Ireland
37. Sip cocoa at the Elephant House cafe where J.K. Rowling first penned the Harry Potter series
Edinburgh, Scotland
38. Shop the Portobello Market at Notting Hill
London, England
39. Cross the famed Abbey Road Crossing
London, England
40. View London's landmarks from the top of the London Eye
London, England
41. Take a trip upstream along the River Thames
London, England
42. Make some important calls from a red telephone booth
London, England
43. Enjoy a meal cooked by the kids at the child-run restaurant, KinderKookKafe
Amsterdam, Netherlands
44. Try red herring in Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Netherlands
45. Visit the infamous Red Light District
Amsterdam, Netherlands
46. Splash in the fountains at Vondelpark
Amsterdam, Netherlands
47. Cruise through Amsterdam on the Pancake Boat
Amsterdam, Netherlands
48. See the Rainbow of flowers at Keukenhof gardens
Lisse, Netherlands
49. Teach our kids about the holocause at the Anne Frank House. "To build a future you have to know the past." =Otto Frank
Amsterdam, Netherlands
50. Take in the colors and fragrances of the floating flower market
Amsterdam, Netherlands
51. Pay a visit to the Flower Puppy at the Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao, Spain
52. Party with the masses at the San Fermin Festival
Pamplona, Spain
53. Witness the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona
Pamplona, Spain
54. Climb atop the giant Gulliver at Gulliver Park
Valencia, Spain
55. Drop off some milk for the stray cats at the House of Cats
Valencia, Spain
56. Take a drive through the Spanish wine country
Carinena, Aragon, Spain
57. Take a stroll along the multi-colored fisherman's homes in Villajoyosa
Villajoyosa, Spain
58. Make a pit stop at Laguna Salada de Torrevieja - dubbed by Maeli as "Lake Pinkalicious"
Torrevieja, Spain
59. Sing "Let It Go" from the stage of Cartagena's Roman Theatre
Cartagena, Spain
60. Wind through the colorful alleyways of the Albayzin district
Granada, Spain
61. Run through the decoratively designed halls of Granada's Alhambra Palace
Granada, Spain
62. See Africa from the Rock of Gibraltar
63. Visit with the free-roaming monkeys in Gibraltar
64. Discover the classic whitewashed villages of Southern Spain along the "Ruta De Los Pueblos Blancos"
Andalusia, Spain
65. Get as many "brain freezes" as possible
Casares, Malaga, Spain
66. Practice distracting the bulls in one of Spain's oldest bullrings
Ronda, Spain
67. Get lost in the white villages of Andalusia
Andalusia, Spain
68. Search for hidden treasures at the Mercadillo Filatelico flea market
Seville, Spain
69. Witness the sea of sunflowers following the sun
Andalusia, Spain
70. Watch the clouds go by in the Benagil Sea Caves
Benagil, Portugal
71. Play hard on the beaches of Spain
72. Enjoy a relaxing gondola ride through the beautiful canals of Venice
Venice, Italy
73. Get lost in the backstreets of Venice
Venice, Italy
74. Pick out our fantasy summer home on the postcard-perfect island of Burano
Burano, Venice, Italy
75. Leave a love note on Juliet's Wall
Verona, Italy
76. Soak up the silence at the secluded Santuario Madonna della Corona
Verona, Italy
77. Catch the cablecar to Pigra to admire the views of Lake Como
Pigra, Como, Italy
78. Chase pigeons in Piazza del Duomo
Milan, Italy
79. Cruise the streets of Milan on the urban trolley
Milan, Italy
80. Borrow a flashlight from a local & trek 1/2 a mile through a pitch black train tunnel to Cinque Terre's secret Guvano Beach
Corniglia, Italy
81. Wind through the centuries old footpaths of the Cinque Terre
Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy
82. Visit Geppetto's workshop in the birthplace of Pinocchio
Florence, Italy
83. Fix the Leaning Tower of Pisa with a slight tilt of the head
Pisa, Italy
84. Sample grapes right off the vine in Italian wine country
Siena, Italy
85. Drink from the fountains in Rome
Vatican City
86. Race to the top of the Spanish Steps - winner gets gelato
Rome, Italy
87. Dance to the street performers in front of the Pantheon
Rome, Italy
88. Consume as much pizza, pasta, and gelato as possible
89. Observe the ancient architecture in Rome
Rome, Italy
90. Skip from column to column at the Giant's Causeway
Country Antrim, Northern Ireland
91. Break a world record - Largest Santa Claus Run
Dundalk, Ireland
92. Tower over Europe's most beautiful monuments
Brussels, Belgium
93. Scold the famous naked boy for peeing in the fountain
Brussels, Belgium
93. Soak up the spirit of Christmas at the musical light show in Grand Palace Square
Brussels, Belgium
94. Enjoy a horse-drawn carriage ride through Bruges' Grote Market
Bruges, Belgium
95. Cringe as the locals dive into the freezing canals
for the annual Kerstdulk (Christmas Dip)
Bruges, Belgium
96. Watch the trains go by at Antwerp's Central Station
Antwerp, Belgium
97. Visit Elsa in her ice palace at the Disney Dreams Ice Festival
Antwerp, Belgium
98. Skate until our toes go numb in Steenplein Square
Antwerp, Belgium
99. "Read between the lines" at Limburg Church
Borgloon, Belgium
100. Stop and pay our respects to the American soldiers
who lost their lives in the Battle of the Bulge
Neupré, Belgium
101. View Luxembourg from the top of the ferris wheel
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
102. Take detour through the winding Semois valley
Bouillon, Belgium
103. Stop and see the sparkling reflections along the River Meuse
DInant, Belgium
104. Consume an obscene amount of waffles, fries, and chocolate
105. Merry go round the Christmas markets of Europe
106. Get lost amid the field of concrete slabs at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Berlin, Germany
107. Exchange a book at the Berlin Book Forest
Berlin, Germany
108. Leave a message of peace on the Berlin Wall
Berlin, Germany
109. Explore the abandoned military hospital where Hitler was once treated
Beelitz, Germany
110. Witness the 12,000 tangled gravestones representing the 100,000 burials in the Old Jewish Cemetary in Prague
Prague, Czech Republic
111. Watch their faces light up when the drinks arrive on
a model train at Vytopia Railway Restaurant
Prague, Czech Republic
112. Roam the centuries-old chambers of the Wieliczka Salt Mines
located more than 1,000ft below the surface
Krakow, Poland
113. Visit the office of Oskar Schindler - the inspiration behind the movie "Schindler's List"
Krakow, Poland
114. Enter the gas chambers of Auschwitz where so many lives were lost. Leave with gratitude in our hearts and a greater resolve to be a little bit better.
Oświęcim, Poland
115. Explore the world's oldest zoo in Vienna
Vienna, Austria
116. Discover the many statues of Bratislava
Bratislava, Slovakia
117. Climb aboard the child-run railway in Budapest
Budapest, Hungary
118. Splash the night away in Budapest's thermal baths
Budapest, Hungary
119. Climb the ceremonial stairs at Fisherman's Bastion
Budapest, Hungary
120. Watch the elephant do yoga at the Hungarian State Circus
Budapest, Hungary
121.Escape to the sleep villages in the English countryside
Cotswold, England
Read more...
Posted by Mackenzie at 1:26 PM , 2 comments
Labels: Europe, McFsEuroBucketList
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International travel can be daunting, especially when it comes to telecommunications. GSM phones give you the option of swapping in a SIM card for a network abroad, or jumping to expensive roaming. But North American owners of CDMA phones have fewer options in GSM-dominated locales. The rugged National Geographic Xplorer, aka the Samsung B2100, provides a ready-made solution with its Travel Abroad SIM, an unlocked GSM card that takes incoming calls on both a U.K. and a U.S. number, so family and friends can reach you at little cost wherever you are. However, you will pay the bill for outgoing calls and for incoming calls to the U.S. number from your prepaid balance. At a price of $179, the Xplorer comes with $29 of credit, roughly 30 minutes of calling. While it's not for everyone, the prepaid model certainly is convenient for some people.
U.S., Canadian, and Mexican customers can buy the Xplorer through Amazon.com, Buy.com, and National Geographic's online store.
The National Geographic Xplorer, sold globally as the Samsung B2100 Xtreme Edition, is a ruggedized candy-bar handset that strives for a modicum of style to complement its thick, grippy skin. A small face peers out from a dusty black body lit up with cherry-red accents. The Xplorer stands 4.4 inches tall by 1.8 inches wide by 0.7 inch thick. Thanks to a rubberized coating, it feels thick and substantial with the right amount of heft at 3.6 ounces. It's also comfortable on the ear. While ridges, dimples, and bumps bulk up the Xplorer's armor, we were able to slip it into pockets without incident, though it felt a bit bulky there. The Xplorer is built to withstand shock and resist water. We're confident it can take a knocking, but as we learned from a run-in with another tough phone, even hardy handsets have their Achilles' heel, so don't try too hard to test its limits.
The 1.8-inch TFT display supports 262,000 colors and has a very low 160x128-pixel resolution, about a quarter of the QVGA standard for basic cell phones. The screen flashes the date and time, battery life, and signal, and is easy to navigate. You can choose from three themes or customize your own, and can adjust brightness, keypad lighting, and backlight time, and even choose what hour the backlighting will kick in at night. You can also customize font position, style, size, and color. The colors and brightness were appropriate for the low screen resolution, though everything could have popped more. The Xplorer's screen, like most screens, fades in direct sunlight, although we found the dark theme held up better to bright sunshine than the light theme.
Beneath the screen are your two typical soft keys, the Talk and End buttons, and a rectangular four-directional navigation pad with a central Select button. The alphanumeric dial pad sits directly below. All the dialing and navigation buttons feel spacious enough; they're fully separated and rise above the surface, so it is possible to dial by feel. That rubber coating makes them feel ever so slightly scratchy to the touch and less responsive than other dial pads we have known, requiring a firmer press. Still, we had no problems dialing or composing text messages with predictive text.
As part of its rough-and-tumble ruggedness, the Xplorer has some interesting design elements, like raised mounds for the volume rocker and the flashlight button on the left spine, the aforementioned flashlight up top, and a swooping loop for tethering the Xplorer to your belt or pack. On the right spine there's a more pedestrian (and disappointing) shared port for the charger and a headphone. It's bad enough there's no standard 3.5mm headphone jack, but Samsung has added insult to injury by making this port proprietary rather than Micro-USB. While the packaging does include an adapter plug with some earbuds, upgrading to new headphones would be a hassle. The shared port also makes it impossible to play music or speak through a wired headset while charging the phone.
Another slight disappointment is the lack of a hardware camera shutter to complement the 1.3-megapixel camera on the phone's back.
There is a microSD card slot for up to 8 MB of extra storage, hidden behind a screwed-on back cover to help protect it from the elements. A small coin should be sufficient to gain access. Locking the card behind the battery would ordinarily be a design mistake since swapping it requires turning off the phone, but the device's rugged philosophy makes the inconvenience understandable.
In addition to earbuds, the Xplorer comes with various globe-trotting charging adapters in the box.
Talk Abroad service
Although its ruggedness is an asset, particularly for more adventurous types, the Xplorer's Talk Abroad SIM card is its real raison d'etre. The SIM card outfits you with one U.S. and one U.K. phone number that your contacts can call at any time. Talk Abroad has partnerships with GSM carriers worldwide, and gets coverage in about 200 countries. Incoming calls to the U.K. phone number are free to you in 70 countries, but calls routed through the U.S. phone number will deduct 25 cents per minute from your prepaid cache.
Costs can quickly mount this way, depending on the zone you're calling to. Most metropolitan areas will levy a 90 cent-per-minute fee for landlines, while calls to mobile phones will cost about $1.15 per minute. Prices shoot up in more remote areas. You can top up your minutes online or by texting a short code.
Talk Abroad is far more expensive than some other services. If you have a smartphone, calls with the Skype application typically cost a few cents per minute for landlines and about 25 cents per minute when made to mobile phones. Prepaid GSM SIM cards also will charge you local rates.
The Talk Abroad service does a couple of other things differently than your typical cell phone. First, it asks you to choose from global, U.S., or Italian roaming settings each time you turn on the phone (in previous models, this was buried in a submenu.) Second, you'll need to dial the country code before you place a call, regardless of which country you're in, then press the pound key before you press Send. Instead of dialing directly, your phone requests call-back, then dials you back before dialing the recipient. This is typical for services that route international calls through other servers. According to TalkAbroad, the SIM dials a U.K. server, which calls both your U.K. inbound number and your recipient's number to connect you, so calls take a couple of seconds longer to connect than you may be used to. Talk Abroad provides 24-hour, seven-days-a-week toll-free customer support for Xplorer customers.


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TCF/Raspberry Pi
Getting TCF to run on the Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, cheap single-board computer that is powerful enough to play HD video. It runs Linux on its ARMv6 chip, connects a monitor and a keyboard for stand-alone work, and provides all the necessary tools to get started quickly. TCF needs a network, so the instructions here are for a "Type B" Raspberry Pi which should cost around 25 $. Getting it up and running is quick and easy:
Building the TCF Agent
Getting TCF up and running is really easy if your Pi has a network - this shouldn't take more than 15 minutes depending on your network connection for the downloads:
- Prepare an SD Card (4 GB recommended) with the Raspbian Image to boot your device. We used "wheezy" for this.
- Connect native monitor and keyboard. Finish setup wizard, type "ifconfig". Read IP address from eth0.
- If you can't get a monitor and a keyboard, you can use a tool like the advanced IP scanner
Now you're ready to rock and roll on the keyboard
# (Replace n.n.n.n by the actual IP address that you read) ssh firstname.lastname@example.com / password : raspberry sudo apt-get update # (Need to update the Raspbian update caches to get git) sudo apt-get install git uuid uuid-dev libssl-dev git clone git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/tcf/org.eclipse.tcf.agent.git cd org.eclipse.tcf.agent/agent cp -R machine/arm machine/armv6l make # In case you don't have libcrypt / libssl, you can also make NO_SSL=1 NO_UUID=1 obj/GNU/Linux/armv6l/Debug/agent –S
The last command actually launches the agent, for testing.
Installing the Agent for auto-start
One benefit of running TCF on the device is the TCF auto-discovery: It allows to connect to a headless device (without keyboard and monitor) quickly even without knowing its IP address. For that to work right after powering on the device, you'll need to register the TCF agent for auto-start:
cd org.eclipse.tcf.agent/agent make install # (Review the files being installed into /tmp) sudo make install INSTALLROOT= sudo update-rc.d tcf-agent defaults sudo update-rc.d tcf-agent enable 2
The last command is necessary, because the Pi uses runlevel 2 by default even if networking is enabled (ie sshd is up); so we'll want TCF to come up on runlevel 2 as well, and not only on runlevel 3 as in most standard Linux distributions. The good thing is that this change is persistent.
Connecting the TCF Debugger to the Pi
- Get Eclipse, we've used the Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers, Juno SR2 package
- Launch it, choose Help > Install New Software and go to the TCF milestone repository:
- http://download.eclipse.org/tools/tcf/builds/development/milestones
- You can safely install all of TCF (will also get you the sources)
- Allow to restart, then switch to the Target Explorer Perspective
- Your Pi should show up under "Neighborhood"
Advanced Configuration
You can install a VNC server on the Pi - the TCF source repository on git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/tcf/org.eclipse.tcf.git has an experimental VNC integration:
sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
There's more details on this Blog on setting up VNC on the Pi.
You can install an NFS server on the Pi - provides access to source code and debug objects that you compile right on the Pi:
# purge rpcbind and nfs-common to avoid [warn] Not starting: portmapper is not running ... (warning). sudo apt-get purge rpcbind sudo apt-get purge nfs-common sudo apt-get install rpcbind sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common sudo nano /etc/exports # add the following line : # / *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,insecure) #restart your nfs deamon /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart


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- Converting PDFs to PowerPoint? An easy-to-use tool is recommended by regular reader Sarah Glassman, who writes that she uses PowerPoint every day. She calls this "a helpful and free online tool," and found it on http://www.cometdocs.com/, a site about conversions recommended by her students.
- Freepath is a new tool that lets you mix Microsoft Word documents, video, audio, live websites and PDFs with PowerPoint slides, using drag-and-drop technology. You can find a free demo on their site to try.
- If you're crafting an ambitious chart for your slides, first read this post, "Imagine a Pie Chart Stomping on an Infographic Forever," and check out its showcase of bad infographics before yours get out of control. A long and thorough post, but a worthy read.
- This set of 5 tips for visualizing data come from David McCandless of the website and book Information is Beautiful, via the Online Journalism blog. Heed number 4 -- "all graphs, charts and infographics should be self-sufficient." If you're struggling with how to explain your chart, it's not self-sufficient.
- But wait, you say. I don't want to dumb down my presentation. Of course not. But clarity and simplicity aren't the same as dumbing it down, and Olivia Mitchell's recent post on the topic does a great job of breaking down the differences and showing you the right path.
- UnMarketing blog's 30 quick tips for speakers (now 35!) gives a frequent speaker's short but essential presentations tips, which include keeping slides in their place as just one part of what you are presenting. Good inspiration, with 5 extra tips added by readers.
- Okay, you've got your visuals. At a loss for just the right word? WordFinder's a tool that can help you (as well as your crossword-solving friends) move it from the tip of your tongue to the front of your mind.
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Minnesota Cuts Back on Satellite-Install Licensing Requirements
Minnesota's governor has signed legislation to ease the licensing requirements for satellite system installers. The new bill, signed by Gov. Mark Dayton, creates a new license category for such installers.
The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association (SBCA) spent three years pushing for the change.
The new requirement goes into effect Oct. 1.
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Womens Canvas
Canvas footwear provides comfort and style for chilled out days and casual strolls in the park. Our amazing range of canvas shoes consists of a variety of styles including hi-tops, espadrilles, pumps and ballerinas, we also have a multitude of colours and designs so you can find the perfect shoe that suits the outfits you wear.
Choose from a range of brands such as Converse, Rocket Dog, Vans and more!


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I made her these family photo cookbook sheets as an engagement gift awhile back.
And I already shared with you the awesome Bridal Luncheon Invitations that my mother made for her.
and since I was due with Michael the day before her wedding and therefore couldn't be there in person,
I wanted to be involved in any way that I could.
(Michael, as it turned out, was born during her rehearsal dinner, so I'm glad I stayed in Pittsburgh)
I love the way the monograming turned out. We used a font called "rage" which is actually many different designs for the different letters. It just so happened that "A" and "E" are the same design.
It's like Amy and Erik were meant to be or something. :)
So we ended up using this same monogram for some place cards and thank you cards as well.
She chose beautiful colors and papers for the invitations,
so I wanted to something really classy and along the same lines for the programs.
We found some really antique grey card stock for the outside, some textured ivory paper for the inserts, and of course bakers twine. I'm such a sucker for baker's twine.
My mom designed the document for the programs in Photoshop, and then we got to work on printing, cutting down, and assembling them all…
About 20 trips to Michael's and many hours later,
my mom and I finished these guys up.
Luckily, we love this type of thing,
and it kept our minds and hands occupied while we were waiting for Michael's arrival.
I suppose we could have finished a lot earlier if we weren't so neurotic about square vs. rounded corners and font selection and sizes… but then what would be the fun in that?
Thanks, Amy, for letting me be a part of your day even though I couldn't be there in person!
Love you lots.


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By DAVID GREEN
Paving, landscaping, seeding.
Those are the big chores still ahead at Fayette's new K-12 school as the project moves toward completion.
Jim Price of the Buehrer Group architectural firm told board of education members Monday that construction is completed.
Beyond the external jobs listed above, workers are spending time going through "punch lists"—a process of looking through the various components of the building to make sure items were installed satisfactorily and to double check for problems. Once punch lists are completed—determining that all facets of the contract were met—the building is turned over to the school district.
Price noted that the kitchen and plumbing have both passed inspection and the fire alarm system has been tested.
Final cleaning of the building is underway and floor waxing should be complete next week. The fire protection pump is complete, although water flow calculations are needed by the state fire marshal.
STORAGE BUILDING—Price says he has backed away from the proposal to construct a steel storage building due to costs and he will next obtain estimates for a pole building.
The rising price of steel put costs at about $200,000 for a 30- by 50-foot structure, Price said, when utility extension costs are figured in.
DEMOLITION—Price will meet with the Ohio EPA to discuss demolition concerns at the secondary building. In addition, a survey needs to be completed due to numerous ground water monitoring wells installed on school property.
At the Franklin building, the entire site will be cleared and graded, with the exception of the storage building and the asphalt leading up to the building. Board president Paula Schaffner noted that the storage building once served as a school house.
Only two pieces of playground equipment will be moved to the new school. Older equipment would have to be brought up to present code if moved.
SIDEWALKS—Superintendent Russ Griggs said there has been discussion about the lack of a sidewalk on County Road R from the South Fayette Street intersection by the Church of the Nazarene to the edge of the school property where a new walk was installed.
Griggs said a street crossing would probably be safer where the school property ends rather than at the intersection where traffic would be heavier.
Teacher Suzette Boesger spoke with village manager Amy Metz about the issue. Metz is investigating grant possibilities and she would eventually like to install a walk to the west to Clay Meadows apartments.
Boesger also spoke about the possibility of obtaining donations for a sidewalk.
INTERSECTION—Board member Dave Brinegar reminded the board about concerns expressed in the past in regard to the intersection east of the school at County Road 23. Because of the hill leading up to the intersection, visibility is reduced and traffic is expected to increase when the school opens.
Brinegar suggested that a stop sign should be installed at the location for southbound traffic on CR-23.
FUNDS—Griggs noted a change in policy from the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC) in which leftover construction funds can be used for the benefit of the district rather than returned to the state.
He spoke of the possibility of seeking funds for a wind turbine that might contribute up to 25 percent of the building's electrical needs. He met with the Buehrer Group about the issue and intends to involve the University of Toledo.
OSFC funds cannot be used for athletic facilities, Griggs said in response to a question from the audience. He will meet this week with representatives from the Fayette Athletic Boosters to discuss facilities and fund raising, but he sees no change from the current arrangement—using the village ball fields and traveling to other schools for track meets—in the foreseeable future.
Board members approved an agreement with the village to use the ball fields for the 2008-09 school year at a cost of $3,000.
LIBRARY—Griggs said it was his understanding that the board would be severing the existing agreement with Normal Memorial Library due to the distance from the new school, although, he said, that has not been presented to the library board.
He said a discussion with the library staff is needed to determine what services might be provided for the new school.


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Chuckup is a business in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It has a warehouse located in the LVA Freight Depot in Las Venturas, and also sponsors Hotring Racers. It is not known what the company specializes in, but it is presumed to be electrical products, as two other appliance companies (Sumo and Kakagawa) have warehouses adjacent to Chuckup's. Chuckup means an event in which one or many fail or mess up in a moment of opportunity, and they are ridiculed by peers.
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


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R. Kelly Performs Live At Madison Square Garden! (Performs Some Classics, Number One, Bump N Grind & Happy People)
"Number One", "Bump N' Grind" and "Happy People
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One of the biggest events we were involved with last year was the IHSA state football championship weekend, which took place Nov. 29 and 30 at Huskie Stadium.
While we can only estimate the impact that this event had on our local economy, we can share some concrete numbers now that we've had time to gather them from other hospitality partners.
The DeKalb County Convention and Visitors Bureau Board thanks all the members of the IHSA Destination DeKalb Host Committee. Without their planning, fundraising, enthusiasm and endless hours of work, none of this would have been possible.
Here's what we know:
• At least 425 hotel room nights were booked for the event
• 30,000 visitors attended ... that was up from the 26,800 reported for 2013
• Some local restaurants reported a 35 percent to 40 percent increase in sales from the previous Thanksgiving weekend
• Gas stations reported an increase in sales from the previous year
• The DeKalb Oasis estimated they did twice the business in gas and food
• We tripled our average monthly website traffic for visitors and page views
• The comments that we received from the IHSA officials, teams, fans, news media and other community members were very complimentary with regard to venue, hospitality and volunteers.
• Approximately 6,000 people visited the community hospitality tent in the Spirit Zone
• More than 200 community volunteers represented DeKalb County as tourism ambassadors
All in all, we scored big with our first IHSA state championship weekend. We feel confident that the economic impact was at least $800,000 based on the data gathered and estimates that the Illinois Office of Tourism has provided to help gauge the economic impact of sporting events. The estimate included indirect and direct spending on hotels, food, gas, facility rental, tent suppliers, catering and other services provided by people taking part in or attending the event.
The weekend proved to be a powerful economic engine that resulted in invaluable publicity and visibility for DeKalb County and Northern Illinois University.
The next time we host is Nov. 27 and 28, 2015. We look forward to another successful and profitable event. The community pride that was displayed was priceless.
2014 Visitor Guides
The cover of this year's visitor's guide is a photo of Jonamac Orchard that was supplied by Bob Kyler Photography. Our thanks to both Bob and Jonamac for allowing us to showcase the photo.
We already have shipped more than 11,000 guides. Approximately 5,000 went to CTM distribution, a tourism rack card distribution company contracted to help attract visitors to DeKalb County. They display our guides and rack cards in their kiosks throughout Chicagoland, Wisconsin and the Quad Cities.
The bureau has a paid partnership with several high traffic oasis sites as well. Our guides are available at the Belvidere, DeKalb, Des Planes and Hinsdale oasis kiosks.
Area municipality partners, hotels, NIU and the Convocation Center all have guides.
Local attractions and tourism partners should call 815-756-1336 to make arrangements to pick up the new guides for distribution.
We can't list all the events that could attract visitors in the guide because of limited space. We do, however, try to list as many county events as possible online at dekalbcountycvb.com. Dates for events are always subject to change. We encourage everyone to check our website calendar of events when planning a visit.
• Debbie Armstrong is executive director of the DeKalb County Convention and Visitor's Bureau.